What notorious racist said the following? “Fewer young black and Latino men participate in the labor force compared to young white men. And all of this translates into higher unemployment rates and poverty rates as adults.”

“In troubled neighborhoods all across this country—many of them heavily African American—too few of our citizens have role models to guide them.”

“We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households…. We know the statistics—that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of school and twenty times more likely to end up in prison.”

“We know young black men are twice as likely as young white men to be ‘disconnected’—not in school, not working.”

As you might guess, Paul Ryan said none of these things. Barack Obama did—in heartfelt speeches at a Chicago church in 2008, at Morehouse College in 2013 and at the White House a few weeks ago.

In his instantly notorious interview with radio talk show host Bill Bennett, Ryan discussed fatherlessness and the importance of role models to passing along an example of hard work. “We have got this tailspin of culture in our inner cities, in particular,” he said, “of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.”

For this offense, Ryan was awarded an honorary white hood by the liberal commentariat. But the broad sentiments are indistinguishable from those of Obama in the statements quoted above—all emphasizing a breakdown of work and the consequences of fatherlessness and social isolation—except Obama’s comments were more explicitly racial.

When Barack Obama says such things, which are undeniably correct, he is a brave truth-teller; when Paul Ryan says them, he is making an odious play for racist votes.

Many of the denunciations of Ryan have simply reflected the left’s well-developed reflex for wanton accusations of racism. But Ryan is so obviously not a bigot that liberal pundits have had to deploy a slightly different argument—that the structural racism of the Republican Party is so deep and pervasive that even a possibly well-meaning politician like Ryan can’t escape its gravitational pull.

Brian Beutler of Salon thinks if Ryan’s comment was intended innocently it is even more damning because “it suggests he, and most likely many other conservatives, has fully internalized a framing of social politics that was deliberately crafted to appeal to white racists.”

Writing in Politico Magazine, Ian Haney Lopez of U.C. Berkeley says, “Suppose we stipulate that Ryan is no bigot. So what? The question is not one of animus on Ryan’s part, but of whether—as a tactical matter—he sought to garner support by indirectly stimulating racial passions.”

Paul Krugman is also in the lack-of-bigotry-is-no-defense camp: “Just to be clear, there’s no evidence that Mr. Ryan is personally a racist, and his dog-whistle may not even have been deliberate. But it doesn’t matter. He said what he said because that’s the kind of thing conservatives say to each other all the time.”

In the wake of a scathingNew York Times investigation published this past weekend, all hell is breaking loose over the General Motors recall of more than 1.6 million cars with faulty ignitions. We covered the scope of the mechanical failure earlier, a failure that can lead to your car turning off while you're driving it, and what to do if your vehicle falls under the recall. But the fallout is just beginning. The Times piece says that 260 incidents of ignition failures were reported to GM and to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA). Now both that federal agency and the carmaker are coming under heavy fire.

Yes, this is the same GM that the administration perhaps saved from extinction. If the allegations are true, but one more example of how government should not be the one to judge which companies should live and which should die. The market should handle such decisions.

From Andrew Sullivan, he quotes another liberal, Michael Sean Winters, who has the decency to give Ryan the benefit of the doubt (after other false smears):

First, we on the left have been complaining that Republicans like don’t give a hoot about the poor, and not without cause. I remember Cong. Ryan speaking at Georgetown in 2012 and talking about subsidiarity and federalism and how the federal government should not be the lead actor in anti-poverty efforts. I thought at the time: That would be credible if he could point to any single Republican governor or mayor who was actually attempting some innovative anti-poverty efforts, but he can’t, so the invocation of subsidiarity in this regard is a smokescreen. It is obvious that Ryan has been trying to wrestle with the issue of poverty since then, and I think we have an obligation not to throw his words back in his teeth the second they are uttered. That is not the way to create a bipartisan consensus on the need for our nation to confront lingering poverty in our midst.

Kudos to Sullivan, Winters, and any others who are honest - even when they perhaps disagree with theory. Would that more in politics could do the same.

One of Mamet’s recent plays, Race, is about a controversial trial full of racial implications. He wrote it to tackle America’s “hypocrisy” on the most intractable of social issues.

“In the African American community, one of the legacies of slavery that Thomas Sowell writes so beautifully about is that the generations that endured slavery were the toughest people in the world,” Mamet explains. “The legacy is not that they emerged as slaves, but that they transcended it, and didn’t want to go back. Then Lyndon Johnson comes along and says, ‘I can help you.’ Well, he helped them right back, but that’s human nature.”

The great jazz critic and essayist Stanley Crouch makes the compelling point that the invention of modern music, and the establishment of the blues aesthetic, by illiterate slaves in cotton fields might very well be the “greatest achievement in the history of the species,” but all America hears and sees every February, during black history month, are the slave narratives and pictures of fire hoses.

Mamet pointed out that one of the most tired, and tiresome, tropes of American politics is the piety that “we must have a dialogue on race.” “We’ve been having one continuous dialogue on race for my entire lifetime, and it only worsens and widens the divide,” he said before explaining that American liberalism infantilizes black Americans in a culture of dependency. “Black people”, Mamet pointed out, “are sufficiently smart and strong not to need the paternalism of good willed white liberals to make it.”

Many conservatives I know aim at the politicians they believe are most pure. They promote their ideals to the nth degree, never waivering from commitment to principle and theory.

Over and over, however, I have always wondered this. In the world of politics, purity may sound pretty - but it doesn't put the sort of laws on the table that you want. If your ideal politician cannot win elections - and instead puts people into office who are not 15% removed from what you'd like, but instead 83% - can that possibly be good?

Goldwater lost in one of the great drubbings in history, lost by more than any Republican but Alfred M. Landon, and carried only his home state and five southern states for all the wrong reasons (opposing -- for a fairly innocent reason -- the Civil Rights Act of 1964.)

No one followed the Cruz playbook more than Goldwater, and no one has managed to lose so conclusively. He offered a choice, not an echo, and nobody took it. But how, if Cruz is so right, could this have happened? It can’t, which is why it is never brought up in this context. In his world, it doesn’t exist.

As the Goldwater debacle has been excised from history, so have the actual reasons why Dole, McCain and Romney all lost. Dole lost because the Bill Clinton he faced in 1996 was not the Clinton of 1993-94, but the Third Way Bill Clinton, who with the help of Dick Morris was triangulating his way between Newt Gingrich and congressional Democrats -- the Bill Clinton who would sign the welfare reform bill and say the era of big government was over and gone.

As for "President" Romney, exit polls showed he carried the electorate on critical measures like values and leadership, and lost because he failed badly on one single measure: "cares about people like you."

This suggests that he lost not because he needed to be more like Cruz, who gives not a clue that he cares about anyone, but more like compassionate conservative George W. Bush, who did very well with the Hispanics and the lower-middle-class white voters whom Romney so drastically lost.

This is perhaps, the final proof that modern liberalism is all about hating people, not helping people. Like so many instances of left-wing lunacy, it involves the Koch brothers.

Specifically, David Koch, who gave New York-Presbyterian Hospital $100 million toward construction of a new outpatient facility. This is how the hospital described Koch’s gift:

Hospital trustee and longtime supporter David H. Koch has made the lead gift of $100 million to support the new center, which will be called the David H. Koch Center. The transformative gift is the largest philanthropic donation in the hospital’s history….

The David H. Koch Center is designed to provide patients with the best personalized and integrated outpatient care, from diagnosis to treatment to aftercare, in a single, patient-friendly and technologically sophisticated environment. The 450,000-square-foot facility will open in 2018. The center will house a range of services, including multidisciplinary care for digestive diseases, cancer and other conditions, as well as preadmission testing for all hospital patients, outpatient surgery, interventional radiology, diagnostic imaging and a wellness center.

A sane person who has found himself on the opposite side of one political issue or another from David Koch would respond to that news by concluding that Koch is a pretty nice guy who is doing some good things in the world, whether I agree with him on various political issues or not. But that isn’t how today’s liberals think. No: instead, New York’s liberals are protesting against David Koch’s $100 million gift.

That’s mostly the usual anti-Koch BS, but the lead item is curious: “Koch funds…the war on women’s reproductive rights.” Actually, the Koch brothers have never taken a position on abortion. To the extent that the libertarian organizations they support have weighed in on the issue, most of them are likely pro-abortion. Also, Mrs. Flynn Walker is herself a lesbian activist whose gay wedding was celebrated in the New York Times. Does she know that David Koch is a supporter of gay marriage? Perhaps not.

David Koch is a cancer survivor who has given hundreds of millions of dollars to cancer research and to improve the treatment of cancer and other diseases, out of love and concern for his fellow man. Liberals try to block improved health care because they are consumed by rage and hate. This episode tells you, really, all you need to know about modern liberalism.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officials will pay $22.3 million to lease temporary offices in addition to the record-breaking $145 millionbeing spent to renovate the agency's headquarters, according to documents obtained by the Washington Examiner.

The temporary offices to be occupied by CFPB for the next two years are being leased in a building owned by Neil G. Bluhm, a longtime friend and campaign bundler for President Obama.

Bluhm made headlines in 2010 when he hosted Obama's 49th birthday party at his Chicago home. Admission was $30,000 per person, with the proceeds going to the Democratic National Committee.

Why won’t America ever see a government program that teaches whitemen how to live responsibly? Because society expects whites to take responsibility for their lives. Even the progressive black politics of a progressive black president seem to hold whites to a standard of excellence – and blacks to an all too familiar standard of inferiority. That kind of underlying assumption, Steele writes, inevitably leads blacks toward feeling “entitled to irresponsibility”.

“We all have a job to do,” Obama said on Thursday. “And we can do it together – black and white, urban rural, Democrat and Republican.” He should have told black Americans – directly – what Steele prescribes: that they “must be agents of their own fate”.

It’s not everyone else’s problem to ensure black and Hispanic kids go to school, stay out of trouble and finish high school. That’s the job of parents. And if Obama was really serious about fixing the troubles facing black men, from childhood all the way through to a crime crisis later in life, he would advance policies that reward responsible behavior, not more out-of-wedlock births.

“The worst part,” Obama said before those families of victims and business leaders and philanthropists, “is we’ve become numb to these statistics” because “we take them as the norm”. Well, they’ve been the norm for going on a half-century, and it’s about time the one man most compelled to lead compels blacks to act for themselves, to be keepers of our own individual destinies.

You ask me why I’m an atheist. I ask you in response: Would a just God allow people like this to run our schools?

“She said if it happened again the suspension would be longer, if not permanent,” said Entingh, who also received a letter explaining the reason for Nathan’s suspension as a “level 2 look alike firearm.”…

Ohio’s “zero-tolerance” rules in public schools came under attack in January when state Sen. Charleta Tavares introduced bill SB 167 to reverse or reform the original 1998 law introduced as part of SB 55. The 1998 bill mandated schools “adopt a policy of zero tolerance for violent, disruptive, or inappropriate behavior, including excessive truancy.”…

According to state disciplinary figures for the 2012-2013 school year, a total of 419 statewide students, from various grade levels, were suspended because of an incident in the category of “firearm look-a-likes,” and an additional 38 students were expelled.

In the Columbus City Schools District, where Nathan goes to school, 12 students were expelled because of incidents in the “firearm look-a-likes” category, while 69 students were suspended. Contrast that with categories such as harassment and intimidation, in which zero students were expelled, though 1527 were suspended district-wide.

David Agema (a Michigan state representative) and some other people organized a Jan. 26, 2012 event that included as a speaker Kamal Saleem. Saleem runs Koome Ministries, which aims to teach about what it sees as “radical Islam’s true agenda.” Plaintiffs say Saleem “has a unique perspective on the internal threat to America posed by Sharia law and radical Muslims as he was once a Muslim involved in terrorist activities who has since transformed himself and converted to Christianity.”

To hold this event, plaintiffs rented a room at Alleghan High School for $90. They also asked the local police department to provide two officers as security. Then,

Shortly before the event was to take place, a woman approached the police officers at Allegan High School and “stated that Kamal Saleem had a $25 million dollar bounty on his head.” An Allegan police officer talked with Jones, Saleem’s bodyguard, who did not deny that a bounty existed. “Jones further stated that there had been death threats directed toward Kamal Saleem from Islamic extremists in the past.”

While the event was still in progress, Chief Hoyer ordered Plaintiffs to shut down the event. Other events were occurring simultaneously in other locations within the Allegan High School building while Saleem was speaking.

Consider what incentives this sort of decision creates. If you don’t like a speaker, make death threats against him. Then, if you can somehow let American government officials know about those threats, the officials will kick the speaker out of the places that it rented to him for his speech. (Nor is the principle in the case limited to high school buildings — school wasn’t in session, and the government could raise a similar security objection for any government building where other people are present, or perhaps even a building whether this is the only event taking place.)

An airline that gets US taxpayer dollars for security has wiped Israel from its flight map.

The US Department of Homeland Security spends $425,000 annually on a preclearance customs facility for Etihad Airways, a partner of American Airlines, at Abu Dhabi International Airport.

The facility fast-tracks Abu Dhabi travelers to the United States by allowing them to clear customs more easily and bypass long lines.

But the carrier, owned by the United Arab Emirates, has an official travel-route map that shows all surrounding countries, including Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Cyprus — but not the Jewish state or its major cities.

Etihad also has refused to transport any Israelis, who aren’t allowed in the UAE. In 2010, it even began teaching its flight agents how to identify Israeli travelers by their “accents and traits,” the BBC has reported.

Etihad is the sole airline that provides service between Abu Dhabi and US cities, including New York, Chicago and Washington.

Many liberals we know get behind the "rah rah rah" for a higher minimum wage. Sounds good, right? Everyone should enjoy a "living wage" (whatever that means) - and of course it appears more appealing to have people with modest incomes have more dough in their pockets.

Pres. Obama insists that raising the hourly U.S. national minimum wage by 39.3 percent – from its current $7.25 to $10.10 by July 2016 – will have (as described by two members of Mr. Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, Jason Furman and Betsey Stevenson) “little or no negative effect on employment.” Furman and Stevenson and the Administration dispute the Congressional Budget Office’s findings that this proposed hike in the minimum wage will put hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers out of jobs. So here’s a challenge that I (and others) have posed before but believe to be sufficiently penetrating to pose again. This challenge, of course, is posed to supporters of this hike in the minimum wage: Name some other goods or services for which a government-mandated price hike of 39.3 percent will not cause fewer units of those goods and services to be purchased. Indeed, name even just one such good or service.

Beer? Broccoli? Bulldozers? Coffee? Haircuts? Natural gas? Automobiles? Housing? Preventive health-care? Lawn-care service? Tickets to the movies? Smart phones? Subscriptions to the New York Times? Books by Paul Krugman? Professors of sociology? Assistant professors of economics? Any of these products work for you? If none of these work, surely you can name at least one other for which a 25-percent price hike will not cause fewer units of that product to be purchased. Or does low-skilled labor just happen to be the one good or service in the entire world for which a government-mandated 25-percent rise in the price that its buyers must pay for it will not diminish buyers’ willingness to buy it?

I'm a staunch supporter of "choice" - at least, in the first trimester.

My guess, however, is that there are few pregnant women out there who, a week or two prior to delivery, wouldn't consider that "entity" inside of them a living baby..... But - not the head of Planned Parenthood!

Via the Corner, be grateful that she’s willing to draw the line at delivery. Some PP officials think a baby’s fair game under certain circumstances even if it’s alive, breathing, and outside the womb.

At least this woman is smart enough to realize her position is shared by only a small percentage of our population. Kudos, however, to interviewer Ramos. Third time's a charm!

Mayor de Blasio brought down the hammer Thursday on three charter schools operated by his nemesis Eva Moskowitz, leaving hundreds of kids without classrooms this fall.

“This has to be the saddest day for the Success Academy’s children, family, teachers, school leaders,” Moskowitz said after meeting with stunned charter parents in Harlem.

“Right now, our kids are being evicted. Evicted out of their school. It’s wrong and we need an explanation. You’re going to have to ask Mayor de Blasio what the motivations are for a decision that will hurt so many children now and, frankly, forever.”

Moskowitz called on Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature to undo the actions. “We need political leadership,” she said.

“We need someone who will put kids ahead of politics. We are a public school. Public schools do not pay rent.”

The Arizona legislature is kind of like the state’s id. It routinely charges into battle without a plan, a map of the enemy territory, or the thought of logistical support. This goes for the right and left wings; thoughtful statesmen are quickly drummed out or drafted to a better gig. Legislators only earn $24K a year, so the role attracts passionate partisans with ample free time.

Although the First Amendment should be enough, legislators wanted to avoid the rare abuses seen in other states in which Christian vendors were punished for choosing not to tacitly condone same-sex marriages. That little nugget was all leftist activists and the media (but I repeat myself) needed to rebrand religious freedom as The Neo-confederate Homophobe Jim Crow H8 Act of 2014.

I agreed with the bill’s modest intentions, but, like many, was concerned about abuses and unintended consequences. With or without a new law, this matter will be fought in the courts and superseded by federal law anyway. Not to mention that Gov. Brewer vetoed it the previous year and was almost guaranteed to veto it again. After the expensive PR mess of SB 1070, the last thing her "Arizona Comeback" needed was another year of headlines decrying us as intolerant rubes.

But the legislature pushed it through anyway. And, despite a famously media-savvy opposition, the lawmakers had no P.R. plan, a negligible online presence and woefully unprepared spokesmen. As most who voted for it hid from the press, the most prominent supporter looked like the cardboard God-bothering hick in every Aaron Sorkin dramedy. Each interview further demonized the bill in the public’s eye.

Predictably, GOP officials across Arizona and the nation fled the unforced error, urging a quick veto. After further damaging the state’s image by dragging out her obvious decision, Gov. Brewer finally nixed the measure last night.

Final score: The Right 0, The Left 1,062.

In a doomed effort on a superfluous bill, Arizona legislators created a political disaster for themselves, short-term damage to the business community, massive fundraising and PR victories for the Left, and a national black eye for social conservatives. Not to mention a lovely media distraction from Obamacare. The only Republican happy about SB 1062 is Chris Christie who could finally give his press office a week’s rest.

Most of my friends were horrified by the Arizona "religious freedom" law that was passed and then vetoed by the governor. They claimed it was "Jim Crow for gays" and made some good arguments about what was so wrong with such a law.

Even though I’m for marriage equality – next week I’ll be filing a brief supporting the challenge to the marriage laws of Oklahoma and Utah in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit – I have no problem with Arizona’s SB 1062.

The prototypical scenario that SB 1062 is meant to prevent is the case of the New Mexico wedding photographer who was fined for declining to work a same-sex commitment ceremony. This photographer doesn’t refuse to provide services to gay clients, but felt that she couldn’t participate in the celebration of a gay wedding. There’s also the Oregon bakery that closed rather than having to provide wedding cakes for same-sex ceremonies. Why should these people be forced to engage in activity that violates their religious beliefs?

For that matter, gay photographers and bakers shouldn’t be forced to work religious celebrations, Jews shouldn’t be forced to work Nazi rallies, and environmentalists shouldn’t be forced to work job fairs in logging communities. This isn’t the Jim Crow South; there are plenty of wedding photographers – over 100 in Albuquerque – and bakeries who would be willing to do business regardless of sexual orientation, and no state is enforcing segregation laws. I bet plenty of Arizona businesses would and do see more customers if they advertised that they welcomed the LGBT community.

At the end of the day, that’s what this is about: tolerance and respect for other people’s beliefs. While governments have the duty to treat everyone equally under the law, private individuals should be able to make their own decisions on whom to do business with and how – on religious or any other grounds. Those who disagree can take their custom elsewhere and encourage others to do the same.

I have very conflicting emotions regarding these issues. As someone who strongly defends the rights of my gay friends and relatives, I in no way want to compromise their freedoms and freedom of association. Nevertheless, as Shapiro states - should we force Jews to work at a Nazi function? Would it be right to say a black person was breaking the law if they refused to photograph a party celebrating the Confederacy?

In a Feb. 16 speech in Indonesia, Secretary of State John Kerry assailed climate-change skeptics as members of the "Flat Earth Society" for doubting the reality of catastrophic climate change. He said, "We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists" and "extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts."

But who are the Flat Earthers, and who is ignoring the scientific facts? In ancient times, the notion of a flat Earth was the scientific consensus, and it was only a minority who dared question this belief. We are among today's scientists who are skeptical about the so-called consensus on climate change. Does that make us modern-day Flat Earthers, as Mr. Kerry suggests, or are we among those who defy the prevailing wisdom to declare that the world is round?

"Consensus" science that ignores reality can have tragic consequences if cures are ignored or promising research is abandoned. The climate-change consensus is not endangering lives, but the way it imperils economic growth and warps government policy making has made the future considerably bleaker. The recent Obama administration announcement that it would not provide aid for fossil-fuel energy in developing countries, thereby consigning millions of people to energy poverty, is all too reminiscent of the Sick and Health Board denying fresh fruit to dying British sailors.

We should not have a climate-science research program that searches only for ways to confirm prevailing theories, and we should not honor government leaders, such as Secretary Kerry, who attack others for their inconvenient, fact-based views.

So what would the ideal alternative to Obamacare look like? It should provide cost-effective care and the quality treatment that Americans deserve. Effective reform should discourage over-insurance that results from the subsidy of so-called Cadillac plans that pay for basic, inexpensive and predictable proceduresand have patient co-payments that are too low. Reform should encourage consumers to use America’s scarce health resources efficiently by inducing them to get tests and treatments that are justified instead of those that are selected because they are almost free to the decision-makers. Finally, reform should make health insurance available to the vast majority of Americans, some of whom cannot afford insurance without help.

[T]here’s a virtual consensus among economists that the minimum wage is an idea whose time has passed. Raising the minimum wage by a substantial amount would price working poor people out of the job market. …

An increase in the minimum wage to, say, $4.35 would restore the purchasing power of bottom-tier wages. It would also permit a minimum-wage breadwinner to earn almost enough to keep a family of three above the official poverty line. There are catches, however. It would increase employers’ incentives to evade the law, expanding the underground economy. More important, it would increase unemployment: Raise the legal minimum price of labor above the productivity of the least skilled workers and fewer will be hired.

If a higher minimum means fewer jobs, why does it remain on the agenda of some liberals? A higher minimum would undoubtedly raise the living standard of the majority of low-wage workers who could keep their jobs. That gain, it is argued, would justify the sacrifice of the minority who became unemployable. The argument isn’t convincing. Those at greatest risk from a higher minimum would be young, poor workers, who already face formidable barriers to getting and keeping jobs.

What the Times wrote in 1987 is equally true today: “Raise the legal minimum price of labor above the productivity of the least skilled workers and fewer will be hired.” This is like a law of physics–but one which, the Times tells us, has now been “discredited.” Sure: just like the proposition that water flows downhill has been discredited. Left-wing economists carried out a couple of flawed studies that purported not to find an increase in unemployment under the conditions studied, and liberals have seized on them to claim that with regard to labor, the law of supply and demand has been repealed.

Nonsense. What has changed since 1987 is not the economic literature, but American liberals’ progressive detachment from reality. Nowhere can we see this decline more clearly than in the New York Times editorial board.

If you fancy yourself a person who values science, rational discourse, and data-driven truths, one assumes you also value skepticism and dissent — and it’s almost certain that you wouldn’t advocate that some debates be off limits. Well, one person with no compunction about shutting down dissent is John Kerry, whose recent comments about climate change to an audience at a U.S. embassy-run American Center in Indonesia were a lot more loathsome than people might gather.

“We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists and science and extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts…”

This is the formula: scientific consensus cannot be challenged. The solutions and policies we offer are as irrefutable as science and, consequently, also unchallengeable. So only “deniers” weigh the economic trade-offs of environmental policy, or the wisdom of dumping billions of dollars and untold resources into cronyism and questionable technologies, or challenge the highly dubious contention that left-wing environmental policies, even if successful, would alter the trajectory of the supposed climate catastrophe.